Flash Review — Sail

 

Players: 2
Age: 11+ 
Playtime: 20 min
Complexity: 4/10

Cooperative trick-taking games were unheard of just a few years ago, and then The Crew came along to show the world just what we'd been missing.

Sail is another one of those, similar in some ways to Jekyll & Hyde vs Scotland Yard, but this time pitting two partners against the dangers of the high seas.

The game is played with a three-suited card deck and a grid of diamond spaces, where players work together to get their pirate ship to its destination while avoiding the dreaded Kraken. This is accomplished through a series of tricks: one player lays down a card, and the other must follow suit if they can, or else play any card from their hand.

Each card shows a number (from 1 through 9) along with a symbol, and the combination of symbols played by both players determines what happens next. Two steering wheels? Move the ship one space forward, in the direction of the player who won the trick. A wheel/tentacle and a cannon? The ship stays put, but the wheel/tentacle card goes to the Kraken deck (more on this below). Two mermaids? Move the ship forward across the diamond diagonal—that's like two moves in one!
And so on.

Halfway through the learning scenario

Whenever the Kraken would attack the ship (there are multiple cases when this happens), discard a specified number of cards from the Kraken deck. If the Kraken deck ever runs out of cards, the ship sinks and the game is lost.

But make it in one piece to one of the end spaces, and victory is yours!... Until the next scenario, which makes life unavoidably more difficult for the players.

Sail is a real gem of a game, with beautiful art, addictive gameplay and a conveniently small footprint.

Most easily forgotten rule: There's not much to forget here, but how about this—at the end of each round, the Kraken attacks the ship a number of times equal to the value under the Kraken meeple on the Kraken board.



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